What Is the 20-20-20 Rule for Eyes? How to Stick to It

The 20-20-20 rule is a simple screen habit. Every 20 minutes, look at something about 20 feet (about 6 meters) away for at least 20 seconds. Eye-care professionals often suggest it as an easy way to rest your eyes during close-up work.

The rule is easy to understand and easy to forget. The most reliable fix is a break reminder app that interrupts you every 20 minutes and times the 20 seconds for you.

What is the 20-20-20 rule?

The three numbers describe one cycle:

• 20 minutes: how often to take the break.
• 20 feet: how far to look. Pick something across the room, down a hallway or outside a window.
• 20 seconds: how long to keep looking at it.

The numbers are a memory aid, not exact thresholds. If your room is small, look at the farthest point you can see. Looking away for 30 seconds instead of 20 is fine. The point is to stop focusing on something close at regular intervals.

It's a habit, not a treatment. It costs nothing and you can do it without leaving your desk.

Why screen work tires your eyes

Your eyes change focus depending on distance. Focusing on something close, like a screen, a phone or a book, keeps the eye's focusing muscles working the whole time. Looking at something far away lets them relax. The 20-20-20 rule breaks up long stretches of close focus with no change.

People also tend to blink less while concentrating on a screen, which can leave eyes feeling dry. Other things can add to the discomfort:

• Glare from windows or overhead lights on the screen.
• A screen much brighter or darker than the room.
• Sitting too close to the screen, or at an awkward angle.
• Long sessions with no change of posture or focus.

The result is often called digital eye strain: eyes that feel tired, dry or achy after a long day at the computer. A short break to look far away and blink a few times is one of the simplest things you can do about it.

If you have ongoing discomfort, blurry vision or headaches, see an optometrist or ophthalmologist. A break habit won't fix an out-of-date prescription or another underlying problem.

How to remember to take the breaks

The hard part is noticing that 20 minutes have passed. When you're focused, an hour can go by without you looking up. Here are the options, from lowest effort to most reliable.

Tie it to something you already do. Look out a window every time you send an email or finish a task. This costs nothing, but it depends on your memory, which is exactly what fails when you're absorbed in work.

Use a phone or kitchen timer. Set it for 20 minutes and restart it after each break. It works, but you have to restart it by hand every time.

Use the Windows Clock app. On Windows 10 and 11, the Clock app's Focus Sessions let you choose a session length and whether you want breaks. It's free and usually already installed, but it's built around focus sessions rather than a repeating 20-second eye break.

Use a break reminder app. The app counts down your work period, interrupts you, and times the break. You don't have to remember anything or keep count. We compare options in break reminder apps for Mac and break reminder apps for Windows.

For short pauses in general, see what a micro break is and how to use one.

Set up 20-second eye breaks in Gubb

We make Gubb, a small app that puts notes, timers and other everyday tools in one window. Its Break Time feature is built around eye breaks: a micro break lasts 20 seconds by default, and its screen is titled "Rest Your Eyes". The one setting to change for the 20-20-20 rule is the work period, which defaults to 60 minutes. These steps are written for the Mac version.

1. Move the pointer to the right edge of the Gubb window and click Settings (the gear).
2. Click Break Time in the sidebar.
3. Turn on Enable Break Timer. It's off by default.
4. Set Work Duration Before Break to 20 minutes. The range is 5–120 minutes, in steps of 5.
5. Leave the micro break Duration at 20 seconds. You can set it anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds.
6. Click Save Break Settings. You'll see "Break settings saved successfully".
   If the break timer was already on when you changed the work duration, the new interval may not apply right away. Turn Enable Break Timer off and on again, or quit and reopen Gubb.

What happens at each break

When the work period ends, Gubb sends a notification, "Time for a micro break", with the text "Take a 20 second break to rest your eyes". Then the Gubb window goes full screen and stays on top of your other windows. It shows:

• A "Rest Your Eyes" heading with a circular countdown.
• A random eye-care tip. One of them is the rule itself: "The 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds."
• A +1 Minute button to lengthen the break and a Skip Break button for when you're in the middle of something.

Once you've seen the screen, look away from it at something far off. You don't need to watch the countdown. macOS may ask whether Gubb can send notifications. If you decline, the full-screen break still appears.

Long breaks

By default, after every 3 micro breaks Gubb gives you a longer break instead, titled "Long Break Time" and lasting 5 minutes. With 20-minute work periods, that works out to a 5-minute break roughly every 80 minutes of work, a good moment to stand up and move.

You can change both values: the long break Duration (1–30 minutes) and Frequency: After N micro breaks (1–10). If you mostly want the 20-second eye breaks, set the frequency to 10 so long breaks come rarely.

Don't rely on the separate Enable Micro Breaks and Enable Long Breaks switches. Gubb saves only the main Enable Break Timer switch, so changes to those two may not stick. Long breaks also depend on micro breaks: turn micro breaks off and long breaks won't trigger automatically.

Limits to know

• Reminders run only while Gubb is open. To keep it running without the window in your way, click the Gubb icon in the menu bar to hide the window, and click it again to bring it back.
• Only the Gubb window goes full screen. If you use more than one display, the others stay visible.
• Skip Break is always available, so breaks can't be enforced.
• If you had pinned the Gubb window on top, a break turns that off. Pin it again afterwards if you need it.

Gubb costs $59 one-time (lifetime) from gubb.net as of November 2026, and you can try the Mac version free for 7 days from the Gubb download page. It's also on the Microsoft Store for Windows. The timer and break section of the Gubb help center has more detail.

Other break-reminder tools

If you want only a break reminder, without notes, clipboard history or timers, a dedicated app may suit you better. Prices are as of November 2026.

Stretchly

Stretchly is a free, open-source break reminder for macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. It stays in the tray (the menu bar on a Mac) and shows a reminder window from time to time with an idea for a break. It has both short and long breaks. An advanced preference lets breaks act like regular windows, with a title bar, no always-on-top, and the option to minimize them.

Some extras, such as showing the current time during breaks, hiding the tray icon and syncing preferences, are reserved for people who contribute code, translations or money. It's built on Electron, so the downloads are large. Pick Stretchly if you want a free app that does break reminders and nothing else.

Time Out (Dejal)

Time Out is a long-running Mac break reminder, first released in 2003. It has two kinds of breaks, a "Normal" break and a shorter one, which fits frequent eye breaks plus occasional longer ones. Version 4.0 (October 2026) added manual, one-time, repeating and random schedules, a catalog of downloadable break themes, and scripts you can download inside the app.

It's free to download. Dejal's site lists optional one-time supporter purchases from $4.99 (3 months) to $59.99 (lifetime). Several 4.0 features, including some schedule types and effects, are rewards for recent supporters. Version 4.0 needs macOS 26 Tahoe or later. Pick Time Out if you're on a current Mac and want detailed control over when and how breaks appear.

Built-in options

macOS doesn't include a break reminder, so a repeating timer is the free fallback (see how to set a timer on Mac). On Windows, the Clock app's Focus Sessions are the closest built-in option, though they aren't designed as a 20-minute eye-break loop.

FAQ

Do I need to look exactly 20 feet away?

No. Twenty feet is an easy number to remember. Look at the farthest thing you can comfortably see, such as across the room or out of a window. What matters is changing your focus from near to far.

Does the rule apply to phones, tablets and books?

Yes. It's about close-up focus, not screens specifically. Reading on a phone, a tablet or paper keeps your eyes focused up close in the same way.

Is 20 seconds enough?

Twenty seconds is the minimum the rule suggests. If it feels rushed, take longer breaks: in Gubb you can set micro breaks to as much as 60 seconds, or press +1 Minute during a break.

What if a break interrupts something important?

Skip it (in Gubb, click Skip Break). Missing one now and then is fine. If you're skipping most of them, try a 25- or 30-minute interval so you actually take the breaks.